


Gummy Vitamins

by StrawberryCrumble



Category: THE iDOLM@STER
Genre: Age Play, Comfort/Angst, Crying, Depression, F/F, Hugs, I started therapy about a week after this, Introspection, Loneliness, Mild Sexual Content, Neediness, Pacifiers, Sad, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrawberryCrumble/pseuds/StrawberryCrumble
Summary: Contains Iron which, if taken in excess, may be harmful to young children.
Kudos: 6





	Gummy Vitamins

She'd done it again. Another shard of the heart turned into a costume for a stage. Raw pain and emotion turned into the tools of a distant director infuriated by their own camerawork. A plea for help and love turned into work. Pouring out her insides only to turn them into a wall of brand friendly aesthetics. Another step in the unending ritual. More Performance, less Being. She stood here surrounded by the things she wanted, the things that soothe and excite her, the things that summoned any sense of safety or movement. It was a perfect recreation of how everything she'd want might look. So why was it suffocating?

Looking around what she saw was a pile of dreams turned anonymous props. Things she could use to demonstrate a singular, strange and attention grabbing self. Things that she valued for how they made her feel and how it might make others feel like treating her. Now though it was all just, exposed. Her heart was laid out by set designers to help her sell herself. The act of engaging in it itself now so filled with apology and vulnerability that the only choice was to rail against it. Play up the character, the brat, make appeal out of her lack of control. Turn this paranoid vulnerability into the thing people knew her for, would want to support her for and wouldn't like her if she didn't have. Don't be any of these dreams, just perform them. Enduring little desires of the heart that whispered of drawing caretakers too her or finally being something that felt like the start of a self, all swept up into something much bigger than them. She wasn't here to be taken care of, she was hear to show off how much she needed to be as a big bit she was still expected to just manage on her own as a brand. She was using her grasping little hands to push away and fight because that'd give all this legitimacy and power, but the more the world enabled this fantasy, the further away it seemed. 

She'd be that weird baby idol for fans and cameras, it'd be a quirky fake thing she does to entertain people. People would look at her amazed by the confidence implied by being so openly strange but they wouldn't see her at all. If anything this was the lowest it'd ever been, under all the posture, excitably encouraged cringiness and little baby outfits there was just more fear than ever. Not about being seen and judged, but, well, about NOT being. Who would see the little girl who just needs her Mommy in all this? It'd just be a story of a weirdo and her weird confidence and a brief aesthetic adventure. Her turbulent heart was what brought all this attention to her, but it wasn't being fed, it was just being more and more turbulent for escalating demands of production. If she could be out here being all the most vulnerable and embarrassing parts of herself and end up feeling nothing but the need to play up her struggle against it then what was even the point in getting here? How long until the novelty wore off and people moved on and she was left with even this burned out? Would this ever start feeling like something she was experiencing herself doing and not something she was directing, editing and endlessly reviewing? More importantly would any of the gratification she inspired in others ever be something she could feel in herself? Could she ever be the girl looking at herself and thinking “Maybe I can be understood” even as she was out there doing it? Would anything ever not feel like work and fighting and vigilance? Could someone just pick her up and carry her home and change everything please?? Please??????? 

Just one person to notice that in the centre of this whirlwind she wasn't actually getting to have any fun. That would be enough. One person to take all this and say its okay to be all this and do it for you and not for engagements. To reverse the tide of deeper and deeper parts of herself becoming opened up only to be advertised instead of felt. To just stroke her hair and hold her tight and make it all okay, to make it something she could be for her instead of for the world and any theoretical observer who might come along. She just wanted to be a goddamn baby so how had actually pulling it off turned into a job? Why was it so bad when it was so good? Why did every encouragement and push feel like more of a reason to create a distance inside herself? Where was her Mommy?????

She took a glance into the eyes of her fuzzy little heart plushie. She swam in those guarded little eyes performing sleepy comfort and neurotic depression all at once, the guarded flatness of it all. In that moment there was a divine understanding between them. With a suppressed whimper she wrapped her arms around it, pushing it's pacifier right up to her own and squeezing tight. Her worn out senses scanned space and time and decided they could get a couple of sobs off at least. The timing would be tight and questions about what happened with the make-up would be risked, but, hey, even that would probably just fit the stage. 

With tentative permission granted and a pre-emptive scene set, Riamu's aching eyes watered up a little. Tiny convulsions wracked her shoulders. Whimpers and sobs poured into her soft friend. She curled up more around it until it felt as though everything in her was being condensed and brought there to be hidden away with the muffled noises and dried tears. The satisfaction was muted, the tears barely flowing. The thoughts felt stuck, her muscles felt tense. Nothing would come of this, she wasn't even good at it. She realised that even crying wasn't for herself anymore, and in doing so remembered she'd need to get it all clamped down on before someone turned up anyway. It wouldn't do to be vulnerable unplanned when she had all this performing to do. 

As she reset her shoulders, shook her head out a little and moved to repair the mask she heard something. Footsteps?? Rapid ones??? 

Her brain froze. Four different plans made by the kind of expertise only years of hyper-vigilance can bring kicked into gear all at once. As she sat in the wreckage of her guidance system and no audience or indigence kicked any autopilots into gear she felt something new. For the first time in a long time she was just primally afraid. A little mouse all but fainting from panic. Her mind grasped desperately for strategies but all it produced was a heaving sob, bigger than any she could remember coming from her. The pure panic and relief from that mingled and left her overloaded brain to follow through on the infantile promise of her surroundings. Her face flew back into the plushie. Her mind forgot to discard the stage prop pacifier. She curled into a defensive ball and wailed her little heart out.

Another new sensation followed all these new little vulnerabilities. The feeling of arms encircling her. The close of a bewildering new trap. A warmth that endured long enough to know was real. An involuntary shuffle towards it. Tears flowing free. A hand on the back of her head. Soft stroking of hair. 

Everything that had ever been melted into this moment. She wanted to cling to it but she felt too small to even begin to try. She wanted to worry about who this was, how this looked, how she'd explain it, what avenues of posturing it would take, if she was doing something that'd make enemies or fans, and exactly which muscles it would be okay to move. 

The warm softness responded to her shuffles with tighter cuddles. To her sudden nervous stillness with strokes down her back. Despite her attempts to plan and control, Riamu realised that her body had got ahead of her. Her position had shifted between all the sobs, shakes and shuffles and she was now all but sitting in a lap. She'd pushed herself closer and closer, squeezing back so weakly she needed to be held up. In feeling the tension release from her shoulders she noticed another thing. Her pacifier had been bobbing up and down this whole time. Her muscles greedily suckling all the comfort they could from it. 

Her throat produced a squeak before she could stop it. She pushed away with her arms before they could try to cling on but the motherly hug didn't end. Even struggling a little made no difference. All she achieved was removing her plushie's muffling effect from her face. Her mouth hadn't grown back up with the rest of her. It's hungry little motions produced an orchestra of noises. Soft wet suckles filled the air, mingled with gentle squeaks and little pops as her mouth worked it's instrument into a more honest statement than she thought she was capable of.   
Cold sobering fear ran in waves up her back but she could do nothing about it. Her mouth wouldn't listen to her. She couldn't find the strength to push away and it almost felt like she wouldn't be allowed to even if she did. With enough time to convince herself her suckles had been either accepted or gone undiscovered she simply gave up resisting at all. 

She felt her size shrink down and down into the tight hold. The truths locked up in her mouth flowed gently to her lips and turned into a pleading wail. Her pacifier fell clumsily from between them. The presence kissed her forehead and then pushed it to her shoulder. With an endless flow of loving shushes, heavenly strokes down her hair and back and an almost frightening sense of control she brought Riamu into the moment and trapped her within it. 

Reduced as she was to a state of almost pure instinct all Riamu could do was respond in kind. Where her confidence failed her, her desire was happy to intervene. All else lost but being shaped by the hands holding her she adjusted whichever way she felt them move her. All she knew is she had totally lost control, that someone had just easily bundled her up, shrunk her down and taken possession of her. She didn't want it to end. She didn't want to do anything that might make it end. She wanted to follow any instruction she could discern and latch onto any sensation she could just to make it as real and eternal as she could.

Riamu moved as one with her wonderful captor until one shift bigger than any before it made her jump a little. She found herself straddling a thigh, the muscles pushing gently up against her. The strokes up and down her back continued, shushes were whispered and the top of her head was kissed. Without even a moment to think Riamu felt herself be bounced up and down with overwhelming tenderness. The bounces continued, increasing in their insistence, until it was more like she was being pushed down against them. As she felt the knee and thigh of her new world start to actively rub at her between her legs her eyes shot open. Jolting slightly against her ride she noticed that once again her body had gotten ahead of her. Her hips were already rocking themselves back into the motions. 

Her fear of getting in trouble spiked through her mind. Her nerves forced her to look up and break the spell cast by continued mystery. Her head lifted. Her eyes looked up in their best attempt to look inquisitorial. The light glinted off the watery tears caught up around them and through the streams of eyeliner, rubbed eyeshadow and flustered red sweaty skin she looked every bit the overwhelmed little girl she was. A hand wiped her tears. A sound caught in her throat. A face smiled warmly back down at her before she felt the teat of her pacifier push slowly and insistently back into her awaiting mouth. Her eyes widened. The pacifier bobbed happily in thanks. Riamu's face was pushed back onto a shoulder and her first knee ride from Mommy continued to the sound of a few wildly sobbed moans.


End file.
